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miscellany (french, tandem & abbey)

September 3, 2010 in Abbey Q. Howley, FSI, Tandem Issues by Alex | 2 comments

Ch- ch- ch- changes

Andy and I have been driving one another increasingly nuts, so… we’ve decided to split up.

Did I get you?

No, not split up like that. Here’s what I mean: we’ve decided that being in the same French class is no longer benefitting either one of us (yes, in terms of learning French, we are driving one another nuts), so on Tuesday I’m moving to a different class. And because I’m moving out, some new people will be moving in, so Andy will have a different class dynamic too.

Patience, my friends

This should be the motto of the Foreign Service.

It seems we won’t have any information about what the tandem couplehood gods plan to bestow upon us for quite some time. My Career Development Officer wants to wait until Andy’s actually on the Register before we explore the possibilities. That could happen as soon as two months from now or as long as two years from now; you just never know for sure with security clearances. Mine took four months, so we’re banking on revisiting this topic in early January…

SOS!

Help! Somebody! Please! This is Abbey, by the way. First, a warning for all you diplo-pets out there: don’t believe it for a second when your owners tell you not to worry, that you’re not going to be boarded this time. (Boarding=jail, in case you haven’t learned that one yet.) Don’t believe it when they say that you’re just going on a little vacation and it’s actually going to be a ton of fun. Let me assure you, it’s not.

For reasons I simply cannot comprehend (wedding, airplane, out of town… I don’t know or care what any of that means), my owners have abandoned me in a house that, yes, is much bigger and nicer than my house. And yes, it has two very nice people who seem to like me a lot, inexplicably, since I am being a pretty big jerk to them. And yes, there is a deck and a yard. And lots of toys. But before you start thinking this place couldn’t possibly be so bad, let me cut to the chase.

I’m living with dogs! Two dogs. Beagles. Who bark. And want to play with me. And want to sniff me. And who can’t take a hint that I don’t like other dogs and just want to be left alone to sleep. And who also steal attention from those two very nice people, who I’d prefer to have all to myself.

Just because boy owner won some big test, he thinks he can do whatever he wants now, abandoning me like this. Well, I’ve got news for him: if I ever see him again, I’m chewing three socks as punishment. Maybe four. That’ll teach him.

But in the meantime, I’m serious: can someone come get me? Someone without any dogs? And no cats either. Please?!

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enough is enough

August 22, 2010 in FSI, French by Andy | 3 comments

So after a hard day of French class and language lab, what do two French students do when they get home? Well, speak more French, of course.

It’s been a big advantage that both of us can speak to each other while we’re at home. It probably doubles the amount of time I spend actually speaking French each day. The drawback, though, is that sometimes enough is enough. My language consultant made it a point to tell me that one or two hours after class was sufficient. If I worked any harder, he said, my brain would explode. Ok, he used words like “inefficient” and “overuse” but you get the idea.

Alex didn’t.

And so we invented a game. It’s one in which we take a short break after class, then we only speak French for an hour. Then we take another break followed by our final hour of French for the day. Since she wasn’t sticking to the rules, I implemented a new one – every time she accidentally broke into French during our designated English time, we delayed French time by five minutes. On Friday I got out of a solid 15 minutes of French because she couldn’t stop herself from saying “merci” or “avez-vous les cles?” or “ou est Abbey?”

As tough as it is to come home and speak French, I’m glad we have the opportunity. It’s been invaluable. Of course the fact that sometimes we can’t help but to speak French is also a sign of just how intense this program can be, and how important taking a break can be.

After all, the last thing we want around here is for any brains to explode. I mean, to be inefficient with our studies.

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slowly but surely

August 20, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 4 comments

This week Andy and I both had our first formal progress evaluation.

We’ve been doing fine on in-class tests, and although we of course wish we could just know everything already, we can see the progress we’ve made. So we weren’t really sweating this evaluation, but still, when it comes to language testing at FSI, you just don’t know until you know.

Now we know.

The good news: We both got exactly the same score (despite each of our best efforts to one-up the other).

The even better news: We both scored slightly higher than the target for this point in training.

Phew. Knowing we’re totally on track and even a bit ahead takes off some of the pressure. Not that we plan to stop working hard. Everyone keeps telling me that language learning is a strange beast, with both strides and plateaus when you least expect them. I believe it. Still, if we keep at it, we should have no trouble reaching the level we need in time to apply for an immersion trip. Yep, always thinking about the important stuff.

Curious just how much (or little, as the case may be) French we speak at this point? Check out this video of an English learner at a comparable level to ours:

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Here’s where we need to be by early October in order to apply for an immersion trip:

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And, most importantly, here’s where we need to be in mid-December to pass the end-of-training exam:

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So… yes, we still have quite a ways to go. Back to the books for me.

P.S. Click here if you want to see the whole spectrum of FSI-designated levels, with detailed written descriptions too.

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it must be nice

August 18, 2010 in FS Life, French by Alex | 9 comments

This is Nice, France. Looks pretty nice, no? Well, I certainly think so. In fact, it’s what’s been getting me through my long grammar-filled days lately.

Let me explain.

Some language departments at FSI arrange two-week immersion trips for their students. A bunch of my A-100 colleagues who are a few months into their Spanish training are actually off studying in Buenos Aires at this very moment. (Life is rough, eh?)

The French department doesn’t arrange any such trips, but they will allow me to go on one provided I work out the details myself. And pay for it. And convince them it’ll help me. (Read: Complete lots of paperwork. This is the government, after all.)

There are also some other bureaucratic… challenges. (Andy refers to these as bureaucratic nightmares, but I’m working on this whole diplomacy thing.)

Because my French has to be at a certain level before I apply, and because I must apply a certain amount of time before my trip, and because my trip must be a certain length, and because I must return to FSI for a certain amount of time before my final French exam, well, by my calculations, there’s a narrow window of somewhere in the vicinity of a few hours that I’ll actually be eligible to apply. Hmm. And that’s assuming I remain on track.

But no worries. I’m convinced to make it work.

I have to. I need something to look forward to. Focusing on French every day without an end in sight is tiring. Barring an emergency, I can’t take any vacation time during my training. And this immersion trip — because I would be learning and studying after all — wouldn’t count as a vacation. Not that it would be like a vacation. I would be in class as many hours as I would be at FSI. Maybe more. And then, of course, I’d have to use my French the rest of the day too.

It wouldn’t be easy, but it’d be a nice change of pace, and I really do think it would help.

If I am lucky enough to get to do an immersion trip, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in Nice, and maybe in the end it wouldn’t be. There are immersion programs pretty much everywhere French is spoken: Senegal, Morocco, Monaco, Guadeloupe, Belgium, Switzerland, elsewhere in France… But, thus far, price and reputation make the Nice program the front-runner. (And yes, I realize that late fall isn’t exactly perfect timing to visit the south of France, but you take what you can get.)

Andy plans to come too. So who wants Abbey for two weeks in early November? Don’t all volunteer at once.

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how many words do you know?

August 10, 2010 in French by Alex | 6 comments

Some trivia: The average college-educated adult knows about 20,000 words.

Interesting? Absolutely.

Horrifying and daunting to those of us trying to learn a second language? Yes, that too.

But fear not, because there’s more: The average college-educated adult only uses about 2,000 of the words she knows in her everyday speech. Now that sounds much better.

By my completely unscientific calculation, I think I have around 500 French words committed to memory. Of course, recalling and conjugating them at lightning speed will continue to be the challenge, but it’s still reassuring that I already have tucked away somewhere in my brain 25% of the vocabulary I’ll need to conduct myself in French like a somewhat intelligent adult.

Well, aside from the whole issue of my accent. But we’re just going to pretend that problem doesn’t exist for now. Thanks.

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académie française

August 9, 2010 in FS Life, French by Andy | 3 comments

Since we started French, we’ve heard a great deal about Académie Française. (Our instructor gets a dreamy look in his eye whenever he finds a way to work it in to the conversation.) From what I’ve gathered, it’s some sort of academic body of French-language scholars who essentially determine what is and isn’t correct French.

If I didn’t like something about the language, well, blame the Académie. If I didn’t like a pronunciation rule, blame the Académie. Abbey was barking at a squirrel the other day and I’m pretty sure I blamed the Académie for that too.

I was curious to learn a little more about Académie Française, so I did some research. (Thanks Wikipedia.)

Some interesting facts:

  • The Académie is made up for 40 members known as Immortels.
  • New members must eulogize the member they replace before taking their seat (meaning sometimes people  turn down prestigious invitations to join simply to avoid having to say something nice about an enemy).
  • The Académie was officially established in 1635.
  • Of the 719 Immortels, only six have been women.
  • One of the Académie’s responsibilities is to issue official dictionaries.
  • They have issued eight dictionaries so far, with the last being released in 1934.
  • They are still working on the ninth edition, but they’re totally almost done, they swear. They just got really busy and then, you know, the holidays were here so no one could work on it. Now it’s been so long and the internet happened, and that’s a lot of new words, so they kind of wanted to start over. But they really thought they sent you a draft. Maybe check your spam filter.

Looking at the list of past Immortels, I’m disappointed not to see any former FSI students. But fear not: I have a plan! I’ve decided that a 3/3 on my exam is no longer enough. I’m gunning for Immortel-dom. Unattainable? Maybe. But remember that few people beyond dreamy-eyed French instructors really seem to care about the Académie Française these days. It may not be too long before they’re begging pseudo-proficient Americans for membership.

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french, french and more french

August 4, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 2 comments

Proof we’re taking this French stuff seriously:

  • Abbey now answers to Abi (said with a ridiculously exaggerated French accent, of course), and has also taken to wearing a beret (okay, okay — not true).
  • We’ve accidentally said merci or pardon to random strangers more times than we can count.
  • We speak to one another almost exclusively in French at home, using caveman-like sentences of course, but is that really so different from usual anyway?
  • Andy downloaded a Sherlock Holmes audiobook en Francais and now spends more hours a night doing “homework” than I’m sure he ever did in high school or college.
  • Alex has traded People for Paris Match. (Well, mostly. Paris March doesn’t cover The Bachelorette.)
  • Our idea of a wild night out is the French conversation group at a nearby coffee shop.
  • Our Facebook accounts have been set to French long enough that we’ve got the translations for “wall post” and “…is now friends with…” down pat. (Useful stuff, eh?)

Although we of course wish progress would come more quickly (Can’t we just be fluent already?), we’re actually doing pretty well. Our class shrunk to five people at the beginning of this week, so we’re getting more conversation practice than before. And we both have a good enough grasp on the grammar we’ve been taught that we’ve been moving ahead to more difficult stuff on our own. (If only there weren’t still like 1,343 tenses left to learn…)

It’s easy to push ourselves that extra mile when there’s so much at stake.

My motivation: my job depends on it.

Andy’s motivation: the millions that await him when he’s fluent enough to create a universal translator app for the iPhone, à la Star Trek. (Yeah, yeah. I know. But let’s let him have his dream.)

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beagles on a boat

July 29, 2010 in Abbey Q. Howley, French by Abbey | No comments

My owners tell me the word “beagle” comes from the French word “begueule,” which means “open throat” or “loudmouth.”

Ain’t that the truth.

So imagine what happens when you stick a bunch of us together on a boat…

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3 weeks down, 21 to go

July 22, 2010 in French by Alex | No comments

For the first two weeks of French, Andy and I were in different classes held at different times. Well, no more. Our two larger classes were rearranged at the beginning of this week into five smaller ones, and despite my pleas to the powers that be, we ended up in the same class. (Kidding. There were no pleas. No casual requests even.)

Truth be told, though, I was a little worried about how this all would go.  Would I get frustrated if Andy caught on more quickly than I did? Would we get sick of spending all day every day together? Would Abbey rip the carpet to shreds in retribution for being abandoned by both of us at once?

Much to my surprise, it’s actually turned out fine. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s turned out well. We’re pretty evenly stacked as French learners: I remember more vocabulary and grammar than Andy, but his pronunciation doesn’t draw our professor’s ire the way mine does. (Side note: I’ve made no progress in Operation Conquer the French R.)

I’ve even discovered some perks to sharing a class with Andy. Like, if I finish my Coke Zero, there’s another one there for me to steal.

As for Abbey, she’s been sleeping her way through our absence just like before.

So, all is well. Well, everything except the fact that we’re supposed to be speaking real French by the middle of December. (My end of training exam date is officially set for December 14.) I still don’t see how that’s going to happen…

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alex vs. the french r

July 14, 2010 in FSI, French by Alex | 6 comments

After four years of Spanish in high school and then three semesters in college — just one semester away from fulfilling my language requirement — I quit. I started all over again with Zulu.

Why?

Well, a lot of reasons, but let me tell you about one of them: that stupid rolled R. It was my nemesis. I could never get the hang of it, and as a result I sounded like a silly American no matter how much grammar and vocabulary I mastered (which wasn’t all that much anyway, but that’s another story).

Doesn’t Zulu have click sounds, you ask? Aren’t those worlds more difficult than a simple rolled R? Well, maybe for some people, but not for me. I can click just fine; I can’t for the life of me roll.

Fast forward almost a decade to today, two weeks in to my French training. For the most part, it’s going fine. I’m catching on to the grammar quite well. I’m remembering more and more vocabulary every day. I can say nasal vowels. I’ve gotten the hang of the fact that half of the word isn’t even pronounced. And most importantly, I know more than Andy. (Nothing like healthy competition to speed up the language learning, eh?)

There’s just one problem: the letter R.

Determined to conquer it once and for all, I first did some research. Turns out it’s quite different from my old nemesis the Spanish R, which is apparently spoken from the tip of your tongue. The French R comes from your throat.

Here’s the most useful advice I’ve found about saying it:

  1. Open your mouth.
  2. Close your throat as if you’re going to gargle or to avoid swallowing a mouthful of liquid, and say K carefully, several times.
  3. Pay attention to where in your throat the K sound is made. We’ll call this the K place.
  4. Begin slowly closing your throat, until you can almost feel the K place. Your throat should be only partially constricted.
  5. Tense the muscles around the K place.
  6. Gently push air through your partially constricted throat.
  7. Practice saying Ra-Ra-Ra (where R = steps 4-6) every day.

Truth be told, I’m not really sure how useful I can claim this advice to be, since after hours upon hours of practicing in the language lab, all I’ve achieved so far is a sore throat.

I’ll keep at it, but in the meantime I’m also dreaming up a plan B. Think it’s possible to learn a synonym for every word with the letter R? Hmm…

Au revoir! Er, never mind. I mean, à bientôt.

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